Worcester’s first airplane visit

Thursday

Apr 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Albert B. Southwick

That was quite an enthusiastic crowd at the Worcester Airport a few weeks ago. The occasion was to celebrate the JetBlue airline’s decision to come to Worcester. JetBlue will be flying two flights daily to and from Florida.

That was great news, well worth celebrating. But it didn’t compare with the excitement ginned up 102 years ago, when tens of thousands swarmed the city’s hills, fields and tops of buildings to watch the first plane ever to arrive in Worcester.

That was on Sept. 4, 1911, and the throngs waited for hours before they glimpsed a speeding spot on the eastern horizon. It quickly grew in size as it approached. People held their breath or screamed in excitement as Earle Ovington’s Bleriot “Dragon Fly” zoomed in low, dodging the tall chimney of the Norton Company and rolling to a stop on the grassy field west of Norton to the excited roar of the crowd. A news account reported that, at Green Hill Park, “50,000 people threw hats in the air and danced up and down in sheer joy at the dawn of a new age.”

In those days, the field was uncluttered by buildings. It stretched from West Boylston Street all the way to Indian Lake and was the site for circuses, fairs, baseball games and whatnot.

Mr. Ovington stepped down from his open cockpit to thunderous acclamation. He was taken to a maintenance tent arranged by former Worcester Mayor Samuel Winslow, and then to a grandstand, where he was cheered to the skies. He said that he was a bit cold and that the flight had been fine, although he had been somewhat nervous flying over the Wachusett Reservoir.

The occasion for the Ovington flight was the TriState Air Race sponsored by the Harvard Aviation Society. It offered a $10,000 prize to the pilot who could most speedily fly a course from Squantum to Nashua to Worcester to Providence and back to Squantum. Mr. Ovington was competing with U.S.Army Lt. T.D. Milling piloting a Burgess-Wright biplane. It was a nip and tuck affair. A few minutes after Mr. Ovington soared off toward Providence, Lt. Milling zoomed in from Nashua. His landing was not as smooth as Ovington’s. While the crowd held its breath, he skidded across the grass and into a marsh at the end of the field. But the plane was not damaged and he was able, a few minutes later to take off for Providence after giving the appreciative crowd a daring display of acrobatics over north Worcester.

It was one of the biggest news events that the local newspapers had ever covered. The morning Telegram went all out in a long subhead to the main story:

BIRDMEN SAIL, AND GLIDE, DIP AND SLIDE, THRILLING THE THOUSANDS OF EAGER WATCHERS AT THE FAIRGROUNDS, THEN FLY AWAY TO PROVIDENCE

Mr. Ovington won the $10,000 first prize and Lt. Milling won the $7,500 prize for biplanes.

Several other pilots showed off their skills in the days following. Arthur Stone, another “birdman,” almost came to grief when he plowed into a soft spot on Norton Field and ended up with his plane on its back. As the crowd, including his wife and 4-year-old child, watched anxiously, he finally emerged “looking like a drenched cat,” according to one report. The plane’s engine was damaged, but a replacement was shipped in from Boston and Mr. Stone flew away the next day after another acrobatic exhibition.

The Wright Brothers had made their epochal flight at Kitty Hawk just eight years before, sailing into the new space dimension that people had fantasized about since that first Cro-Magnon began to wonder how the birds did it. By 1911 the airplane had become a part of life. Several companies were experimenting with monoplanes and biplanes, and every community in the land was eager to see a plane in the air. As the Telegram put it: “The crowds at every point were thrilled with excitement at the appearance of the first birdman ever seen coming into the city. The sensation many of them experienced at the first glimpse of the speck in the sky, speeding on and ever increasing in size, was one of the keenest exhilaration and admiration for the man who could sail like a bird and with even less apparent effort.”

So, as Worcester hails the arrival of a new airline, let’s not forget Sept. 4, 1911, when it all began here. Let’s have a big blowout on that day. Maybe some JetBlue bigwigs will fly in for the occasion. How about a special flight to and from Florida? If this JetBlue arrival proves out big-time, it really will be something to cheer.

And another thing about dates. Seventy years ago, in June 1943, when I was in the Navy pilot training program, I soloed for the first time.